richardmurray

we more together, written by me for the where are they now danny and sandy challenge https://www.deviantart.com/hddeviant/journal/WATN-Danny-and-Sandy-Grease-1284154671 TITLE: WE MORE TOGETHER It is 1989 and the Rydell High School senior prom is commencing. The prom king and queen are standing on the center stage. The prom king Danny Zuko Jr., DZJ most call him, has a crown like The Marvelous Magical Burger King. The prom queen Frances Facciano , Marianne most call her, wears a pink Phrygian cap with a cockade representing Rydell. DZJ tap the microphone: "Hi everybody! You know what time it is!" All the children start to holler, and they move the tables and chairs to the back to make space centrally. Marianne yell:" For the fifth loose dance off, we have a special treat! All our parents and guardians helped us prepare dances from the 50s but what only a few of us organizers knew was our parents would join in the fun!" Outside the hall used for the prom, multiple engines can be heard revving up. The hall doors open strongly and Danny Zuko and his loving wife Sandra, both silver haired, all clad in shiny black leather, enter the hall using the Four Corners dance. They are supported by a host of other silver-haired folks. Rizzo in a Sondra Dee outfit, holding hands with Kenickie in a penguin suit. Frenchy waving to the prom queen. Eugene Florczyk as a Burger Palace Boy and Patty as a Pink Lady enter. The children in the auditorium form a pathway to the center and surround their elders making thirty years dance together in the summer of 1989. from @HDdeviant / Richard Murray Text https://www.deviantart.com/hddeviant/art/Where-are-Danny-and-Sandy-now-1291061204 Audio https://aalbc.com/tc/events/event/638-we-more-together-perchance-audio/ https://www.tumblr.com/richardmurrayhumblr/806943693595688960/challenge-arrives-february-2nd

story written by me ?Challenge arrives February 2nd – @richardmurrayhumblr on Tumblr https://www.tumblr.com/richardmurrayhumblr/806943693595688960/challenge-arrives-february-2nd

MY PROSE BEFORE THE ARTICLE IN QUESTION When I think about what I read from @Troy the owner of AALBC and then from Wannaby the CEO of Deviantart. I realize the assessment of websites has an interesting history. First, what is speculation. Speculation is a thing that looks. In finance this doesn't mean even financial assessment, it means those with the power to rate or rank different items in the market place decide on their own agendas what has value or not. The Website formerly called Twitter(TWFCT - pronounced twofist), has the largest expanse of small text blocks, of any website. but does it really make any money? Deviantart is speculated at less value than TWFCT but is it really? I am on TWFCT as well as Deviantart and if I am blunt, TWFCT has no value. 99.99% of the content of TWFCT is trash, daily ramblings that are usually repeats. While Deviantart is mostly art: photographs of sewing-crotchet-sculpture-cosplay -and many other physical craft /screenplays/poems/photographic arts[black and white or color]/fractal art. Deviantart for me is one of the few websites i actually enjoy for itself. Twitter's strength is the volume of users,like tiktok, like facebook and other members of the meta clan of websites. But very little quality in their posts. But the speculators for websites don't bother with post quality, they bother with volume of users. If my experience getting others to create has an result, it is how hard it is to get people to create. People can complain/bitch/argue/yell through the internet easily. That is done a lot and treated as natural or positive in most places online. But getting people to actually create, use their imagination. Build something with more than just their pulpit passions is very challenging, in my experience. So... I end my prose saying to all to assess the quality of where you are online. Yes, the fiscal environment allows for fiscal assessment of websites to be dysfunctional or imbalanced because it has no rules. Like with the evaluation of stocks and many other things, the speculators are not presenting a balanced fiscal truth but an agenda driven scenario to keep wealth or value in certain spaces or ways. It is that simple. Citation https://www.deviantart.com/wannabby/journal/Transformation-complete-NEW-growth-level-unlocked-1291193085 THOUGHTS FROM THE CEO OF DEVIANTART DeviantArt turned 25 this past year and celebrated over 100 million registered users. To be precise we’re approaching 110 million users! That is no small feat for an online art community founded in 2000, born on the early web, predating Facebook, Reddit, and other social networks, and stubbornly remaining the devious nexus of the internet for artists and art lovers from all walks of life and places. It hasn’t always been a smooth ride, and we’ve faced our fair share of challenges along the way. But as we celebrate our quarter century and step into the next phase of our journey, I can proudly say that DeviantArt is more alive and vibrant than ever before. I joined the company nine years ago following the Wix acquisition - first as COO, and for the last four years as CEO. I want to share a bit about where we started and how we’re doing today, especially for those who might’ve seen commentary about DeviantArt from people reacting from a distance, rather than from experience. “But, someone on the internet said that DeviantArt is… dying.” Let’s address this ridiculous nonsense once and for all. There has been no “downfall of DeviantArt,” nor any mass exodus. Quite the opposite; today, the community is larger than ever. Around the time of the Wix acquisition, we had roughly 36 million registered users. Now, we’re approaching 110 million - more than 3X growth in our user base. Let that sink in. As we wrap up our 25th year, let me be abundantly clear: After years of rebuilding, we have officially completed a full transformation: of network, product, and business. As you may have figured out by now, I’m not going to sugarcoat anything in this post. I’m planting a freaking huge flag at the top of the peak we’ve climbed. And the best part? The story is just starting. First, the hard truth: The network DID decline… for too many years For a long stretch in the 2010s, DeviantArt wasn’t growing the way it should have. The decline wasn’t a single “exodus” moment where everyone left overnight. It was more like a slow bleed: daily network signals gradually trending down, year after year, after year. Here’s what that looked like in our core network signals from 2013 to 2019: (Network decline: Daily Unique Watchers and Favers, Jan 2013–Jun 2019) Alongside the declining network, our business model wasn’t anything to brag about either. Most of the business revenue came from third-party ads, essentially “renting out” creators’ art to earn pennies on ad clicks that ultimately just sent users off the platform and worsened the bleed. That period matters because it sets the context for what comes next: We weren’t dealing with a community that disappeared. We were dealing with a platform that needed rebuilding - technically, product-wise, and strategically - so that the community could thrive again. 2017-2025: Nine years of rebuilding, in three phases Phase 1: Stop the bleeding (2017-2019) With the Wix acquisition of DeviantArt, a new era began. The priority was blunt and urgent: stabilize, modernize, and reverse the decline. That’s what drove Eclipse: a new core experience, stronger foundations, and a push to make DeviantArt feel relevant and usable again. And yes, some people still miss the old “dA.” But nostalgia isn’t a strategy, and it definitely doesn’t scale. The platform was outdated, suffering from a lack of innovation and investment that held the network back. Of course, no platform is perfect. We're realistic that Eclipse had its issues, and we've spent the years since relentlessly correcting mistakes and iterating based on community feedback. Phase 2: Rebuild the network (2019-2023) After Eclipse launched, we iterated relentlessly. Product and UX improvements, alongside continued significant engineering and ML infra investment, helped pull engagement back up. A new generation of creators and art lovers found their home on DeviantArt. Starting in 2019, daily active users on DeviantArt began climbing steadily, and core network signals (including submissions, watches, comments, and faves) shifted into consistent, sustained growth. And finally, in 2023, we completely removed third-party ads from the platform. Remember those same core signals that declined for years? After all our blood, sweat, and tears, they turned - and by the end of 2025, fundamental engagement actions like “Watch” (following a creator) and “Fave” activity aren’t only back; they’re trending up with sustained momentum. This is the part that matters for anyone who thinks “DA is dying”: A dying platform doesn’t steadily climb in the fundamentals of a creator network. A dying platform doesn’t rebuild trust with long-time members while becoming appealing to a whole new generation. That’s exactly what we did with DeviantArt. And here’s the full arc: down (2013-2019), then back up, and now building unstoppable momentum. (DeviantArt Network Growth: Daily Unique Watchers and Favers, Jan 2013–Dec 2025) Phase 3: Monetization becomes an engine (2023-2025) Over the last two and half years, we did something that has changed the trajectory of the platform. We stopped treating creators' monetization as a side-set of isolated features and started treating it as a core part of DeviantArt’s value proposition: building a real creator economy powered by a true creative network. That shift went hand-in-hand with the decision we made back in 2023 to remove ads completely. Instead of promoting advertisers, we decided to promote our monetizing creators. Seems obvious now, but when you generate billions of page views monthly and need to pay expensive AWS bills, quick ad money isn’t easily let go. Make no mistake. It has been one of the best decisions we’ve ever made: tying our success as a company to the success of our users. While the IGs and TikToks of the world are still chasing ad clicks and selling your data, we're betting on our artists, the way a true creative network should. There’s not a single day I look at the platform and don’t think, “Good riddance to f*cking ads!” Helping creators succeed is a much better focus and mission, and one that we are very proud of as a company. Monetization: We didn’t just experiment, we proved the model. This 25-year anniversary is a symbolic moment, but the transformation is measurable. We proved that creator monetization works, not as a side feature, but as an engine. We moved from “this should work someday” to “this works now,” with real, sustained growth behind it. And the most important part is what it signifies: DeviantArt is no longer rebuilding just to become sustainable. We’re scaling from a foundation that works, a foundation that’s rock solid. (DeviantArt Creator Sales, 2020–2025) The final elephant in the room: Let’s talk AI art DeviantArt was founded as a home for digital creators, deviants of traditional art, back when digital tools were still controversial and digital art was not considered “real art.” Since then, we’ve always been a home to all creators and all types of art, and we’re not about to change that now. Over the last few years, AI technology became available worldwide. In 2022, we were one of the first major platforms to embrace AI-generated art. But we didn't stop there. We were proactive in establishing necessary standards. We introduced clear directives and community guidelines, starting with tagging of AI art for transparency, empowering our users to control what they consume and to curate their experience. These early actions set a benchmark, and many other platforms have followed. Boy, we got A LOT of heat. But, we were also 100% right. Since then, we have been seeing waves of new creators leveraging this tech and co-existing with traditional digital artists, and the lines between them are starting to blur. We have no plans to stop and will continue to champion all our creators, whatever tools or tech they use in their creative process (obviously as long as they abide by our policy and the law). It’s in our name. We are home to all deviants and all art: every style, genre, and creator DeviantArt has long been one of the world’s largest creative communities, and we’ve always been proud of the range of art our creators make here. You’ll find the classic pillars of digital creativity - photography, illustration, painting, design, fan art, comics, and concept art - as well as the more devious corners of the art world: manga, cosplay, kinky, and mature artwork. There’s a saying: “We’re not everyone’s cup of tea, we’re the champagne.” But the truth about DeviantArt is different: we’re the tea and the champagne - and yes, the milkshake, matcha, and tequila too. You get it, right? Name your drink, DeviantArt has got it. A full-spectrum home for creators across every style, genre, and vibe. What do I mean by full spectrum? These pieces were tagged with over 3.8 million different tags, a testament to the incredible breadth of creativity on the platform. We don’t hide that spectrum. We celebrate it. Because creativity isn’t one aesthetic, one culture, or one comfort zone. And for anyone trying to reduce DeviantArt to a single label: that says more about their lens than about the platform. We’re also realistic about what it means to operate a massive UGC network at global scale. When you host millions of creators and billions of interactions, you inherit the same challenges every major platform faces: content moderation edge cases, bad actors, spam, scams, and occasional fraud. In a way, it’s an unfortunate byproduct of success: growth attracts more creativity, but it also attracts more bad actors attempting to exploit the system. We don’t pretend those issues don’t exist. We see them, we measure them, and we’re relentless about eliminating them - improving detection, tightening enforcement, and investing in the systems and teams that keep DeviantArt safe, fair, and creator-first. So deviants, if you’ve been away, consider this your invitation back home. DeviantArt has always been more than a gallery. It’s a living network, a place where creation, discovery, and belonging collide. So whether you joined last week or in 2003: submit a piece, watch an artist you admire, leave a thoughtful comment, or add something you love to a collection. And if you’re one of those people who occasionally thinks, “I should log in to my DA profile again sometime” - do it. Make it this week! After 25 years, the party is on, and you’re welcome to join. 2026: We’re not slowing down, we’re scaling After years of foundational work, and after proving both the network momentum and the creator economy, we’re entering a new phase with no constraints. We’ve leveled up and are ready for this stage. Now it’s about scaling on all fronts. You’ll see us keep pushing the network forward, growing the creator economy, and compounding the value of what’s already working. And yes, we have a few surprises coming in 2026. Not vague “someday” promises, but tangible actions that will truly expand the canvas for our community, breaking down language barriers and enabling new ways for creators to connect and earn through physical expressions. More community. More creation. More ways to grow. More ways to earn. Your turn (I genuinely want your comments on this one) When did you first join DeviantArt? If you left at some point - what would make you stick this time? What’s one thing you want us to protect at all costs as we grow? Be devious. Onward and upward. - Moti Cover art by @BisBiswas POST URL https://aalbc.com/tc/topic/12377-a-quality-of-websites/ PRIOR EDITION https://aalbc.com/tc/events/event/635-economic-corner-32-01282026/ NEXT EDITION https://aalbc.com/tc/events/event/657-economic-corner-34-02202026/

just place the face VIDEO https://photos.app.goo.gl/G9RxaEaqCzGNepML9 citations nicki minaj has her gold card https://www.msn.com/en-us/music/celebrity/nicki-minaj-shows-off-trump-gold-card-after-publicly-defending-president-says-she-is-finalizing-citizenship-paperwork-as-we-speak/ar-AA1VcU6w?ocid=BingNewsSerp old status post https://aalbc.com/tc/profile/6477-richardmurray/?status=1459&type=status NICKI MINAJ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Nicki_Minaj_on_her_support_for_President_Donald_Trump_-_January_28,_2026.wav Nicki sung by Donald Trump in a cheerleader outfit written by Richard Murray / HDDeviant / RichardMurrayHumblr REFRAIN 1 BEGIN Oh Nicki, satisfy satisfy, you lift my hype hey Nicki, hey Nicki REFRAIN 1 END REFRAIN 1 REFRAIN 1 REFRAIN 1 REFRAIN 1 You've been blinging too long my student for this night They think you've got it wrong but I know you've got it right You'll never say goodbye But you can't take me home, Nicki 'Cause when I say you will, it never means you won't You're aidin me my wills , negress, please never don't Every day you still tweet my name with yours, Nicki REFRAIN 2 BEGIN Oh Nicki, what a pity, they don't understand I take you in my heart when you take me by the hand Oh Nicki, you're so wity, can't they understand? It's gals like you, Nicki Ooh what you sell Nicki, sell Nicki Here's some Trump dough , Nicki REFRAIN 2 END Hey Nicki Now when you grab me by the card, who's ever gonna know Every time you move, A little more plastic grow There's some clicks you can use, so don't say no, Nicki So come on and let me give it anyway I can Anyway I want to do it, you'll take it like a ham Oh please negress, please color up my maggots Nicki REFRAIN 2 REFRAIN 1 REFRAIN 1 REFRAIN 1 REFRAIN 1 REFRAIN 2 REFRAIN 2 REFRAIN 2 REFRAIN 2 Inspired by Mickey performed by Toni Basil originally written as Kitty by Mike Chapman and Nicky Chinn NOTE: wity - original definition use, comes from wile which means tricking deceitful pity -original use, meaning a duty, a loyalty

The Trumpaccounts + Trumpcard have begun. https://trumpaccounts.gov/ https://trumpcard.gov/ Trump Accounts thinking on it reminds me of the bonds grandparents would get their grandkids in the usa in years past. The website says all a parent has to do is put in one thousand dollars for a child and it will grow for said child, even if said parent doesn't put any more money. But, five thousand dollars can be placed in as a maximum per year. I see an interesting gap. The website says the money will be invested in firms in the usa and parents/guardians can see the valuation of the investment. They say, at eighteen a child can extract for a home or college. The financial questions I have are the following, what firms in the usa can guarantee a positive return on investment every year, no matter what? And, can the money when the child is eighteen be extracted as raw cash? the website doesn't give important specifics, but I did notice the following. The small text says, estimates are for illustration only and are based on an account opening at birth with $1,000 opening deposit and are derived from historical S&P [ standard and Poor's] 500 averages. Actual results may differ and are not guaranteed. So, while the webpage suggest guarantees, the disclaimer for lawsuit suggest it isn't guaranteed. Essentially, this whole program is the federal government as a broker. A broker can't guarantee you money but a broker may provide a nice set of profits. But it all assumes, the broker will do well. I wonder what will choose the firms to invest in. I bet anything a large language model will be used to choose where the money is invested in... historically, the usa had a culture that mirrored this modern drive. It was the culture of stock market investment before the crashes before commonly called world war one. What many may not know is the usa before said war, had a huge culture of stock investment brewing. The crashes plus the war ended that culture, and led to the eventual Securities and Exchange Commission. Well it is a risk, but I gather the larger idea. Many don't know but the United States of America demands a citizen pay $2,350 to revoke their citizenship. https://www.usa.gov/renounce-lose-citizenship https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/legal/travel-legal-considerations/us-citizenship/Relinquishing-US-Nationality-Abroad.html I argue this serves the reverse function. Tying people and children to the usa through investment. NOTES What will the money be invested in? Funds will be invested in a diversified portfolio of low-cost index funds designed to maximize long-term growth while minimizing risk. When can funds be used? Funds can be accessed without penalty when the child turns 18 for qualified expenses like education, a first home purchase, or starting a business. Withdrawals may be subject to restrictions and would be taxed at ordinary income rates. Can I contribute to my own account? Once you start earning income, you can make contributions to your own account. This is a great way to develop good savings habits early in life. How can corporations participate? Employers may choose to contribute to the Trump Accounts for their workers or their workers’ children, supporting early savings and financial readiness. Employers may choose to offer employees a salary reduction program under a “cafeteria plan” so that employees can make pre-tax contributions to Trump Accounts. Are corporate contributions tax-deductible? Yes, corporations can contribute up to $2,500 to Trump Accounts on behalf of their employees' children. All contributions are tax-deductible. Can philanthropists make donations? Yes. Nonprofit organizations and local governments can contribute to Trump accounts of all children in a state or qualified geographic area. Trump Card for individuals gold card version- fifteen thousand processing fee plus one million dollars for US residency platinum- for foreign nationals, fifteen thousand processing fee plus five million dollar contribution for the ability to spend up to 270 days in the United States without being subject to U.S. taxes on non-U.S. income. for business For a $2 million contribution, receive U.S. residency in record time with the Trump Corporate Gold Card for your employees. After a $15,000 DHS processing fee* and background approval, onboard your preferred candidate. Your Trump Corporate Gold Card allows your business to transfer access from one employee and grant it to another with a small, 5% transfer fee, which includes the cost of a DHS background check. A 1% annual maintenance fee will also apply. *Additional small fees to the U.S. Department of State may apply depending on the applicant. NOTES Can family members apply? Yes. If an individual applicant or corporate sponsor wishes for a spouse or unmarried children (under 21 years old) to join the cardholder in the United States, then each such family member should be included as part of the initial application. This will ensure that these family members receive all of the privileges conferred by the Gold Card Program, including expedited processing. Each family member is subject to an additional $15,000 DHS processing fee and $1 million gift. How do applicants pay? $15,000 nonrefundable processing fee: Credit Card (U.S. and international); ACH debit (U.S. bank accounts only). $1 million or $2 million gift payment (depending on type of applicant): Upon receiving an email after vetting is complete, applicants or their corporate sponsors should instruct their banks to use an ACH debit or Swift Wire Transfer (U.S. and international bank accounts) according to the instructions provided at that time. Visa-related fees: The applicant will receive information directly from the U.S. Department of State on how to submit the visa application fee and payments for the required medical examination. IN AMENDMENT Both are basically investment channels into the usa. the accounts goal is scale, if they get enough accounts they will influence the market, the same way, retirement funds, which are collections of individual investments have huge value. the cards goal is for the worlds rich, they can afford them easily but allows an ease through bureaucracy. On an aside both websites say they are official websites of the united states government. and something from warren buffett 1999 nebraska forum 0:03 testing one million two million three million that's working okay 0:08 i i'd like to uh talk to you about your financial future and i hope those figures become applicable to all of you 0:15 as we go along at uh uh and i'd like to start 0:20 uh by posing a problem for you and instead i'm just gonna talk for a couple minutes and we'll do q a because 0:26 what we want to do is talk about what's on your mind but i'd like you to think about this for just a second 0:31 if as we walked out of here today i said i would like to buy 0:38 ten percent of your financial future i was going to write you a check today 0:44 and from this day forth you were going to give me 10 percent of everything you 0:50 earned how much would you want to charge me for that i'm going to buy one tenth of you 0:57 and i may take the low bid incidentally so be careful what you uh right now well i think if you thought 1:03 about that a little while i should you can contemplate that for a few minutes you know you're gonna get a check for me today 1:10 and you can do anything you want with the money but from this day forth you have to give me 1:15 10 of what you earn i think it would be very foolish of you any of you if you asked for less 1:24 than say thousand dollars now it's gonna be a few years before you're out earning money and so i've got a few years of dead 1:29 money there but then i would start getting this royalty on you as you went along so i really think that if you thought about 1:35 it you'd most of you would want a fair amount more than that i think you'd be right 1:41 fortunately i didn't make this deal with anybody when i started out so nobody's got a 10 royalty on me but i 1:47 think that 50 000 would sort of be the absolute minimum and if you think about that that means 1:55 that right today you are worth five hundred thousand because of ten percent of you is worth 2:01 fifty thousand in cash today your potential 2:06 is worth a minimum on 100 basis of 500 000 that is the big financial 2:12 asset you've got it's way more important what you do with that 500 2:17 000 asset that you own today than whether you decide to buy stocks or 2:24 bonds or whether you put your money in a mutual fund or pick your own stocks or anything of that sort 2:29 the biggest financial asset that you have going for you by miles 2:35 is the value of your own earning power over the years so that's really what you should focus on if you're focusing on your financial 2:42 future that means you should finance focus on you because whether you're 10 percent is 2:48 worth 50 thousand or a hundred thousand or three hundred thousand which would be five hundred thousand or 2:53 a million or three million for all of you whether it turns out to be one or the 2:59 other is really dependent uh in a very large part on what you do in the next few years 3:05 all of you in this room have the brains to do extremely well in life you've all 3:11 got the energy to do extremely well in life and then the question is how do you apply it if you've got a 200 horsepower 3:17 motor you get 200 horsepower out of it you get your full potential or do you get 100 horsepower 3:23 or 50 horsepower now there's two things that can hold you back 3:29 in getting the full horsepower out of your your engine whatever it may be all of you have big enough engines 3:35 and one of those is a lack of education but that probably isn't going to happen to very many people in this room 3:40 if you did have a lack of education if you didn't have a chance to get a decent education in life it wouldn't make any difference what 3:46 that potential was because you'd never unlock it but the second most important thing and 3:52 equally as important is in terms of the habits that you develop in terms of what you do with yourself 3:58 when we hire people we look for three qualities we look for integrity we look for 4:05 intelligence and we look for energy but if they don't have the first one integrity the other two will kill you because if 4:12 you're hiring somebody without integrity you really want to be dumb and lazy don't you i mean you know the last thing in the world you want forms to be smart energetic so 4:19 smart and energetic only goes with integrity but the nice thing about Integrity 4:26 you know you make your own decision on that you can't change your iq or how far you control football 4:31 or how high you can jump or the color of your hair very easily but you can 4:37 elect to have integrity that matches anybody else's and if you match that 4:42 with intelligence which you have and energy which you have uh you will get an extraordinary result 4:48 and you'd be very foolish to sell me ten percent of yourself for fifty thousand on the other hand if you don't match it with that your 4:53 potential will in a significant part go unused and i'll give you a little 4:59 simple test to apply in terms of thinking about the kind of habits you want to develop because you can have any habits you want to be you can be 5:06 you can be lazy you can be prompt you can be you can be late you can be honest you can cut 5:11 corners i mean you have all these choices and those are choices for you to make nobody else is going to make them 5:16 for you and i would suggest that you play this little game with me too uh think about the person you would most 5:24 like to be in life so maybe it's one of your contemporaries maybe somebody a little older but pick 5:29 out the person you admire the most the person that you'd change places with it if you could and then 5:34 write down why you admire them just put it on a piece of paper and then figure out the person that you would 5:40 least like to change places with you who really turns you off who do you find repulsive and list the 5:47 reasons why that person turns you off so much and put those down on the other side of the 5:52 paper and then look at that list and you'll find that everything on the left hand side 5:58 what you admire in other people the qualities they bring to life cheerfulness you know generosity all 6:05 kinds of things you'll find those are things you can do yourself it's very simple you gotta apply yourself but the habits 6:11 you form and doing that early on will carry you through life and on the other hand you'll find that 6:17 the things that make people repulsive selfishness obnoxiousness all these things egotism 6:22 are things that no one has to have if you find those in yourself you can get rid of them as long as you get rid of 6:28 them early so all i suggest is that you write you write down a list of what what you admire what you find uh 6:35 contemptible and decide that you know the ones on the on the 6:40 at admired side are ones you're going to acquire for yourself and if you do that when you're young it'll carry you through the rest of your life this 6:46 doesn't work if you do it when you're 50 or 60. by then the habits are too well formed 6:54 but if you do it early behavior becomes becomes a habit so if you do that two or three years from 7:01 now if you go through the same exercise you'll find out the person you admire the most is yourself that can be a 7:07 little dangerous under some circumstances but it uh but it's not it's not a bad thing i mean you want to be somebody you like 7:14 and you don't want to be somebody that you're that you dislike and and uh form those habits early 7:21 you basically can't miss now i'll give you one other small piece of advice that's just a corollary on this 7:26 and then we'll get to your questions and and that is as a general matters of one piece of 7:32 specific finance financial advice i would say you know 7:37 avoid credit cards just forget about them we're in various businesses that issue credit cards the american public loves 7:43 credit cards but if you start revolving debt on credit cards you're going to be paying 18 or 20 percent and you can't make 7:52 progress in your financial life going around borrowing money at 18 or 20 percent 7:58 you can make a lot of money by lending it out at 18 or 20 over time you know if you can find anybody that's good that 8:04 will borrow from you but you don't want to be on the side of the equation that's always behind in life 8:11 you know i was lucky i'd saved about ten thousand dollars by the time i got out of school that ten thousand dollars was 8:18 really worth millions i might have earned later on because after you get a family and everything the expenses roll in but but those were my 8:24 tools to work with but it was only because i was ahead of the game if you're behind the game by ten thousand dollars at some point and 8:30 paying 18 or 20 interest on it you will never you know you'll never get out of it so 8:36 the trick i've got a partner that says all i want to know is where i'm going to die so i'll never go there you know 8:42 and uh and that's true in financial matters as well you want to figure out where you don't want to be 8:48 uh ahead of time and avoid that and i get about a dozen letters a day from people who are having terrible 8:54 problems and there are two reasons why they have terrible problems one is a number of them have had health 9:00 problems of some sort i mean they have really been hit by some or somebody in their family has been hit by some kind of catastrophic 9:07 illness and that is a you know it's a terrible thing to happen to any family and they get in they run up bills they 9:13 can't pay and and really only society can solve that one uh uh in terms of protecting people against 9:20 that that's just plain bad luck but the other one is from people who run up credit card debt 9:26 and uh they're facing bankruptcy or they've been through bankruptcy once before and they owe a whole bunch of money and 9:31 they can't they can't even pay the interest let alone pay any principal and half of my letters come from people 9:36 like that and that that that problem is avoidable catastrophic illness is not but but uh 9:42 credit card debt is something you bring on yourself and it's way better it's way easier to stay 9:48 out of trouble than to get out of trouble financially and and i will guarantee you if you run 9:53 a big credit card that you will be in trouble uh probably the rest of your life in terms of uh your financial situation 10:01 on the other hand if you get ahead of the game uh even it's on a very modest scale so that 10:07 money is coming in from investing and you're you're people owe you money or equities owe you 10:14 ownership you'll be way ahead of the game compared to paying it being always being paying your creditors 10:20 every month so my advice to you is uh if you can't pay for it don't buy it and get yourself in a 10:28 position where you can pay for anything and then we'll be glad to see at borsheims or the nebraska furniture market 10:34 now let's uh let's have some questions do we have a mic out there that people 10:39 can either go to or that travels around and i can't necessarily see too well 10:45 from um we're gonna have one mic on each side so just raise your hand and wait for us to come to you 10:51 okay we have somebody up front like a mic [Music] 10:57 anything that's on your mind ask about don't don't don't be bashful Financial Advice 11:04 yeah how would you advise people who aren't necessarily going into a career field in which you would make a 11:10 large base salary such as like medicine or something like that maybe 11:16 performing arts or music how would you advise us to keep up financially with the rest of the 11:23 world well it is true that a market system 11:29 uh does not pay as well in some in some activities as as 11:36 might seem appropriate for the importance of those activities the society just take teaching for example i mean 11:43 teaching does not pay well and what could be more important i mean you know you've got to be as 11:48 as interested in who you're the teachers of your children are as who your accountant is or you know 11:54 whatever or who's winning the heavyweight title of the world or that sort of thing but but it doesn't it doesn't pay well and 12:00 and it's a fundamental choice uh whether you're going to go into something 12:06 that for many people it'd be a fundamental choice whether you're going to go into something you love or something to 12:12 to try and make a lot of money i think that generally it pays to go with what you love 12:18 i think that it's very hard to find people when they get to be my age who 12:24 say they're on that they've loved what they've done all their life and feel was very worthwhile uh but they're terribly sad they made 12:31 that choice because they didn't make a lot of money i i don't think anybody's ever ever said that to me that they wish they'd gone 12:36 into something else where they were uncomfortable doing it or didn't enjoy it didn't feel very productive but 12:41 made a lot of money so i don't think you'll find that so i would i would i would go to work 12:47 i would go to work in whatever turns you on it may turn out that it'll it'll be more 12:52 profitable than than you can think but almost everybody here will make enough money unless they get some terrible 12:59 habits along the way to do reasonably well and and doing reasonably well in this country 13:04 really is is uh is pretty darn good i mean it is it's not necessary to have 13:12 uh huge amounts of money in order to enjoy yourself i enjoyed myself when i was at my ten thousand dollars and i live in 13:18 the same house that i lived in when i was making when i had about that i bought it 41 years ago i like the house then i like the house 13:25 now i mean if you think about it if you have a reasonable job 13:31 you'll be eating at mcdonald's and i'll be eating mcdonald's so we're we're to push on on on food i mean you know in fact i 13:37 hope it's dairy queen actually and maybe and if you come to dairy queen you'll see me and you can order anything on the 13:43 menu i can order we both can afford it uh you know you'll you'll wear the same 13:48 clothes i wear i'll pay more for my suits but as soon as i put them on they look cheap on me so we'll look about the same and um 13:55 we'll both live in the same kind of houses i live in that house from 41 years ago and it's it's it's warm in winter and it's cool in summer and it's 14:02 comfortable and you'll live in a house that's that's similar and then and what difference does it make is if you 14:07 have 50 more rooms or you know guest houses or all that you know it'll probably just bring you problems i mean you have to worry about 14:13 the about the greenskeeper or something when you get through so i i i have been in the houses of people uh 14:20 where the houses are worth um oh probably 200 times what my house is 14:26 worth and i would not be any happier in those houses at all in fact i'd be less happy i just have one more thing to 14:32 to worry about and you know the dozens of people around the place and people quitting and people stealing from 14:38 you and all kinds of things to hell with it yeah we drive we'll drive the same kind of 14:44 car in fact you'll probably drive a better car i drive a car's about eight years old i don't know what it's worth now but it gets me around fine i mean i i'm 14:50 perfectly happy we'll watch we'll watch the same television you know we'll work on the same computer pretty 14:56 much the only difference will be how we travel long distances you know i will fly in a plane that's 15:04 more comfortable than than flying southwest airlines or something which i've got nothing against but 15:10 that's the one real big difference and other than that i do what i like every day i hope you you'll do what you like 15:15 every day to do and i work with nice people i hope you work with nice people uh and that's there's 24 hours in the day 15:22 and those are where the hours go so great wealth uh 15:28 is the tiniest bit different in a real sense than having just a 15:34 decent a decent income and and to trade 15:39 a decent income and something you love doing and something where you feel worthwhile doing it 15:45 for huge wealth where you trade off a lot of your principles would 15:51 be a terrible mistake Success 15:58 would you not acknowledge your success more on yourself or from the help and teachings of others 16:03 well i had i had i was very lucky in life uh if you tell me who your heroes are i 16:10 i will make a pretty good prediction about how what you're going to do and i i i had the right heroes i was very 16:17 lucky in life and my heroes never let me down and started with my dad and then i had others in business and so 16:24 i have had great teachers some formal teachers some that were just 16:31 informal teachers teachers by instinct or example and if i hadn't had those 16:37 uh you know my life i'm sure would have been very different if i'd been born anyplace else when i was i was born in 16:43 1930 uh and at the time 16:48 one out of 50 births in the world were in the united states so i came in against 50 to 1 odds against being born 16:54 in the united states i would have i would have been a disaster you know if i'd been born in afghanistan or 17:00 or peru or some place i mean i was i won i won the lottery the day i was born you know by being born in this country so 17:06 have you uh i mean you you the odds were 17:11 probably 40 to 1 against you being born in this country and that were five times more likely to have 17:16 been born in in china six times and four or five times more likely you've been born in 17:21 in in india or some other place where it would not have been as easy to exploit the full potential of your 17:28 talents so we've all won the lottery in that respect and and that's just plain luck i mean it uh 17:34 and i was lucky to be born at this time i mean capital allocation is something that pays off extremely 17:40 well in the society now but it doesn't pay off in other societies and it didn't pay off you know many years ago my 17:46 my friend bill gates says that if i was been born a few thousand years ago i'd have been some animals lunch 17:51 you know i i can't run very fast and i can't climb trees and you know i just happen those are talents 17:58 nobody asked me to climb trees now but uh there was a time when it might have been important and 18:03 incidentally bill would have been some animals breakfast i mean he can't run so fast either but uh in any event uh 18:10 you know we are lucky i mean just imagine being born a couple hundred years ago with exactly the same talents 18:16 and how far they would have taken you then you know the average person today lives so much better than 18:21 the richest person lived 100 or 150 years ago so uh i'm lucky in that respect lucky to be 18:29 born of terrific parents i was lucky to be raised in omaha in a in a great public 18:35 school system i got a start here in the first eight grades they gave me a foundation 18:40 that later when i went off the track a few times uh carried me through because i had a terrific grade school education 18:47 in right here in omaha rose hill and one of the reasons i had it incidentally is kind of 18:52 unfortunate but i had that great education in part because women were being 18:59 enormously discriminated against and so a woman at that time could be a teacher she could be a 19:04 secretary she could be a nurse you know and that was about it so he had a half the talent pool in the united 19:10 states limited to just a few jobs so you had an abundance of talent 19:16 uh in those activities like nursing or teaching because uh that talent with males was spread 19:22 across every act every form of work activity there was but with women it was concentrated in a few areas and that 19:29 that benefited me it's kind of sad because it didn't benefit those teachers but but i was very lucky and i've really 19:35 been that way all my life and what i do is what i do 19:40 is important as you know what a good teacher does or a good nurse does or something of the sort you know i think that's quite 19:46 questionable it pays off enormously well in a market economy like the united states and 19:51 but that's an accident didn't have anything to do with any innate ability of mine Technology 20:00 my name is marinatsed and i attend omaha central high school good for you fine institution now mr 20:07 buffett technology has been a great factor in um stimulating the world economy 20:12 what are your predictions for the future of the technology industry and what what is its future role in 20:19 world economy and the united states economy yeah well it's there's no question it's turning the world upside down it's 20:25 it's done done it somewhat already but it will you know it's just beginning but it's 20:30 moving very fast i met gates on july 15 1991 i was out 20:36 there for a fourth of july uh celebration with a friend and 20:41 uh who subsequently died in greenfield with the washington post and she took us down to visit the gates family 20:47 and he tried to educate me about high tech and he had better luck with chimpanzees 20:53 i mean i i was i was really a disaster but but he's a good teacher but one thing he he told me was that 21:00 at the time he said you know you've got this model in your head of the world and your model has 21:08 time and distance as very limiting factors and he said they aren't limiting factors anymore he said you know 21:14 the cost of talking to somebody around the world or getting your message in front of 21:19 somebody or publishing is it's going to be zero and they're so close to zero it doesn't make any difference and 21:25 you know that was revolutionary but it's happening already in a in a very very big way and it's just uh what eight 21:32 years later and and it's it's exploding so 21:38 high-tech information technology whatever you want to call it is changing the world and it's going to 21:45 change it in a very very big way it'll change i mean that's one of the things i think about in businesses we buy 21:50 uh we announced the purchase uh yesterday of a uh furniture retailer in in in 21:56 boston in the boston area and you know i think to myself what effect does this new world have in terms 22:02 of the internet on furniture retailing i mean you have to think about questions like that the changes will be huge i will i played 22:08 bridge yesterday uh with people uh all over the country but i played it with people all over the 22:14 world i just sit down on my computer and i've got some popcorn there and i'm in khakis and a sweater and i i can have a bridge game in 30 seconds 22:20 with people all over the world and uh no cost to it basically you know that's a lot different 22:26 than trying to arrange a game with four people in omaha you know on a day when one guy wants to play golf another wants to watch baseball and i 22:32 mean it's it it just it changes things in huge way uh we are very fortunate i mean it's 22:40 in the degree to which the united states leads the world in this area i mean we have a lead it's 22:46 hard to think of who's in second place and 15 or so years ago this country had an inferiority complex it'd be hard for 22:53 you to remember because you weren't old enough to be around them but in the in the early 80s we were wondering 22:58 whether the germans and the japanese were going to own everything and that they were going to make all the steel and they were going to make all 23:03 the cars and everything else and the television sets and we were going to flip hamburgers that was the standard line 23:10 and just imagine in a short period like 15 years how that's changed around in an important way that's changed 23:16 because of this information uh a revolution uh 23:22 where we like i said i don't know who i don't know who you would name as being in second place in the world but here's 23:27 the most important industry in the world and the united states has this incredible position and we're moving all 23:33 the time with that position so i think that argues for a very 23:39 i think it argues for a terrific future for the world over time and i think it argues even more for a terrific future for this company a 23:45 country what are the best ways for youth to get started now in securing their financial Financial Future 23:52 future for for what to secure their financial future 23:57 for you youth oh well it's not it's not very complicated uh it goes back to getting full use out of 24:06 your own talents first i mean the difference between whether you're going to be earning x or 2x or 3x 24:11 a year uh 20 years from now uh is going to be a function of how well 24:19 not how much talent you have but how how well you use the talents you already have and 24:24 uh so that is the your best financial future is your own ability and and 24:31 and your uh a capacity to to use those abilities to their 24:38 potential and they can't take that can't be taken away from you can't they can't even tax 24:43 it i mean you know most things if if you wanna you know a piece of real estate if they 24:49 double the taxes they double the taxes and that changes your ownership in the property because now in effect the taxing authorities own 24:55 more of it because they've got a greater command on the revenue stream uh the same thing about 25:00 almost any asset you have but they they don't tax what's in your head 25:06 and they don't tax your ability to start performing when you when you get to work in the morning 25:12 and finish in the evening to to your potential one of the things that amazes me is how 25:18 people who really do perform well just sort of jump out at you once you're running a business when i got out of school 25:24 i thought you know everybody would behave that way but they don't most people sort of go go through life in a sleep 25:31 walk and and it if you don't you will stand out so the big the 25:37 biggest thing for your financial future is yourself now beyond that it is always being ahead of the game rather than getting behind 25:43 the game it's saving a little no matter how you do it i mean i delivered papers i worked at pennies i sold golf balls i had a pinball machine 25:49 round i did a lot of things that enabled me to accumulate about ten thousand dollars by the time i got out 25:55 of school uh ten thousand doesn't go as far now as it did then but it 26:00 having anything so that you're ahead of the game and not getting behind the game is enormously important i mean just you 26:07 know if you're gonna run a hundred hundred yard dash against a bunch of people in life 26:12 if you can figure it out so that when the gun goes off you're 10 or 15 yards ahead instead of 10 or 15 yards behind it's 26:18 going to make an enormous difference in how that race comes out so having having 26:24 some net resources doesn't make much difference whether they're in stocks or bonds in my view but uh 26:30 and not having debt when that gun goes off when you get out of school is a huge plus over being behind the 26:37 game and uh you know it may come from delivering a paper out in the morning it may come 26:43 from part-time work someplace but but put aside a few dollars for yourself but uh 26:49 so that when the time comes and you enter you enter the workforce uh you're ahead 26:54 of the game and not behind and then once you get there don't get behind by buying a whole lot of things that you figure you're going to pay for some 27:00 day while you're paying 20 interest in between students if you could please say your Education 27:06 name and school when you ask a question hard for me to see anymore the microphone is but i can 27:15 my name is patrick doherty and i'm from papillion la vista high school i was wondering with the increasing 27:21 costs of education today what can students do to deal with their debts once they're out of college 27:28 well that's a tough one i mean i guess i'd pay it off as fast as i could and i would incur as little debt as 27:34 as possible in in before that time came and i would say 27:40 this [Music] in my experience in business 27:49 there is very little difference if any between a very high priced business 27:55 education and what's available a lot for a lot less money so i i 28:01 i went to the university of nebraska at lincoln my last year in college i went to wharton for a couple years before 28:07 that uh i learned just as much at the university of nebraska as i did at wharton at uh 28:13 and there's nothing against wharton i mean it's just me we had a very good school here i had some terrific professors at lincoln and so i i would not assume 28:22 that if i was paying a few thousand dollars for an education uh here in the state for example versus 28:28 paying huge amounts elsewhere that it was going to make a lot of difference uh uh most of a lot of the education 28:37 uh and you need to be prodded in the right direction but an awful lot of it is is itself is self-taught uh 28:44 i mean andrew carnegie did a wonderful thing in this country in terms of libraries and i used to spend a lot of time 28:50 at libraries i think i got locked in at the university of omaha one what was then the university of omaha and they had i couldn't get out for hours and one 28:56 night i got so entranced with what i was reading but it there's there's all kinds of information available now with the 29:03 internet it's so much you know easier than it was then so uh it's out there to be taken 29:09 and it isn't necessary to pay 30 or 35 000 a year to go to some big name school 29:17 to get the education at all i mean if you're going to learn accounting if you're going which is probably the most important 29:22 course you'd take in business if you're going to learn account you can learn accounting absolutely as well in my view going to you and always going 29:29 to to harvard i mean i see i i would i'd bet on that and 29:35 so i wouldn't run up huge bills in terms of getting a 29:42 business education now you know if you're going to get a medical education i mean there's certain professions where 29:47 there may not be any way around spending a fair amount of money and getting in debt to some degree 29:52 you've got to make that decision yourself but i'd certainly try to minimize it and uh and i would sort of i would have 29:59 it figured out how i would handle that debt in say a five year period after i got out of 30:05 school or i would think twice about incurring it there's a question up here if we can bring a microphone Youth Advisory Council 30:13 uh my name is kyle clark i'm here representing the omaha youth advisory council um what advice would you have for a 30:19 forming non-profit organization for forming a non-profit organization well i've always tried to avoid forming 30:25 non-profit organizations but uh well that would that would depend 30:31 entirely on what i wanted to accomplish i mean it you know it'd be one day it was a hospital it could be another thing 30:36 uh you know there's a there's so many types of it so i you know you've got to get people that 30:42 are that are experienced and involved uh in an entity like that and uh 30:50 but it depends so much on the on the objective uh you're working at uh 30:58 yeah i promised this young lady here microphone for a long time Civic Involvement 31:05 hi my name is kara harbert and i attend millard west high school and i understand that you're very civically involved and i was wondering 31:11 how important of a quality you think that is for an individual in life and why yeah well i wouldn't say that i am that 31:17 i mean i i do certain civic things i think i think your your model as a citizen for example in omaha would be walter scott i mean he 31:24 is far more civically involved than i am and uh incidentally his predecessor peter 31:29 kiewit was too but walters carried it to new heights so i uh i don't want to take uh on any mantle 31:36 for that myself i do some things uh one of the problems i have is i love 31:42 what i do so much that that it sort of takes over i mean i'm like a guy that likes to play a lot of 31:48 golf or something except i like i like the business i'm in but uh i've got a family that 31:53 participates very actively uh some of my children work on almost 31:59 anything that comes along in the civic area and you know it's you do in the end people 32:05 do what they want to do to quite a degree and and uh i think 32:10 i've never talked to anybody that that enjoyed working in civic activities that 32:16 didn't feel was very worthwhile after they've done it i mean they built something and participating in building something is 32:21 always a lot of fun and and actually you have a good time we have this golf tournament for example in 32:26 september and we raise some money for something but everybody has a good time so nobody's paying any price 32:31 by doing it i'm having a good time the people who come are having a good time and uh we get to show em all off to 32:37 people but you should be enjoying things that go along and you will if you work in 32:42 civic activities that that that interest you and you can do the same thing in politics i mean that 32:48 uh you know if you if you get if you find political ideas 32:56 or politicians who particularly uh you identify when turning on you can get 33:01 a lot of self satisfaction out of out of working and you're doing something worthwhile so i 33:06 just just follow your instincts on that that'd be my recommendation 33:17 [Music] hi my name is jeremy graham from millard south high school Economic Problems 33:24 we're probably the i guess the elite youth of today and i've questioned 33:29 what do you see as the problem the biggest economic problem facing the youth of today going into the future 33:37 yeah i i don't think you that you're going to have enormous economic 33:42 problems i think you will live in a society where the average person lives better 33:50 by a significant margin than the average one of a generation earlier or two generations earlier that's been the 33:56 history of this country it's a marvelous country that way i mean it when you think of it we have four and a half percent of the world's 34:01 population you know and and what's been accomplished here is incredible 53 34:07 percent of the of the value of corporations that are publicly traded in the world exist in 34:13 the united states with four and a half percent of the population this country always has done well uh 34:19 they say in stocks that you should buy stock in a business that's so good that even an idiot can run it 34:25 because sooner or later one will and and that's not terrible advice well that seems to have been sort of the 34:30 history of this country from time to time i mean we've had all these problems that have come 34:35 along if you look back in the last hundred years and list all the problems those countries run into you know you make a very long list and a 34:41 lot of people who focused on those problems at the time have missed the bigger picture and the bigger picture is that every generation 34:48 lives better than the one before and that's because of uh that's because of 34:53 savings because savings enable people to create new tools to do better things as they go 34:58 along and it's also due to an environment that lets people realize their potential to a greater 35:05 degree than most other environments in the world it's far from perfect i mean it's it's sad how far it is from perfect 35:12 but it is better than anything else around i mean in this country uh you've got you don't 35:18 have some commissar or something running a you know a big business in this country you've got a guy like jack welch 35:24 and a fellow like jack welch makes a difference of night and day in terms of the productivity of that 35:31 business over a period of decades and productivity is what a is what causes the standard of living to rise so 35:37 anything that a system that throws up the jack welch's of the world to run businesses is going to have an enormous advantage 35:44 over a society that does it by heredity or that does it by government edict and 35:49 we've got we're closer to that society that i've described than than anything than any other country and 35:56 it's it's led due to great things and it will continue to lead to great things so i think i think you've got the best future uh 36:03 you know you don't face you don't face a war and you've gotta you you've got a a great 36:09 uh you've got a better uh future in terms of uh 36:16 achieving material rewards than any generation in history so i wish i could trade you places i might 36:24 get taken up on that by a few of you though 36:37 [Music] hi i'm ryan wilkins from millard west high school and um i was wondering if you or if you Y2K 36:45 could uh speak for mr gates were afraid of the impact of y2k on the economy or 36:51 specifically the stock market yeah well i'm i'm i'm glad you gave me a chance to bring in other people because i 36:56 i'm the last guy in the world understanding about y2ki you know i don't know why this microphone's working i don't know you 37:01 know why likes go on or i i flip on the switch of my television set and pray i mean it's all it's all beyond me but i would 37:09 say this the smartest people i know in that area uh in large part 37:14 think it's going to be a non-event at uh uh in this country i don't i can't speak 37:20 for the rest of the world but uh so i think uh i think you'll wake up on 37:26 january first and find the world hasn't changed from december 31st now i would say this you might you might 37:32 get a whole bunch of friends to write your checks for a billion dollars on december 31st and deposit them and you know who knows what'll happen can't 37:38 lose anything i mean i like to just bounce and if the system gets followed up you know you you might find a lot of money in 37:44 your account but i wouldn't count on it there wait we have a we own a company called executive jet 37:50 we have about 14 or 1500 uh customers who own pieces of airplanes with us and we so we've got a hundred and 37:57 well we got 160 of their planes and some of our own flying around it'll be very interesting to me to see 38:02 what the advance people let us know ahead of time when they want to use it it'll be very interesting to see how many sign up 38:09 for january 1st at 1201 but it'll uh i it wouldn't bother 38:14 me to fly him in the least on january 1st or do anything else on january 1st 38:21 ideally i hope the getting prepared to watch the huskers play in the big game Good Economics 38:29 i'm jamie solis from twin valley and i was wondering how do you decide what you'd invest your time and money in 38:36 yeah well i i i like to find businesses that have good economics now 38:42 what what are good economics well good economics are a business that has some kind of a moat around it that 38:49 makes its product or its service or its location or something a little more desirable than to the 38:55 customer than any other sort of comparable product uh you know the number one candy bar in 39:01 the last 30 or 40 years has been snickers people don't fool around with different candy bars they fool around with 39:07 different length dresses they fool around you know with all kinds of things but they don't fool around with candy bars 39:13 because they figure you know they're going to go in and lay out 50 cents or whatever it is and put it in their mouth and they're not going to for 50 cents 39:19 and putting in your mouth i mean you're not going to say i'll i'll put in i'll lay out 45 cents and put something else in my mouth so 39:25 you find that very stable and we like businesses that we think we can figure out where 39:31 they're going to be in 10 or 15 years i don't know where the information technology businesses are going to be in 10 or 15 years i know where snickers 39:37 bars are going to be in 10 or 15 years they're going to be selling just about you know the way they do now i know where wrigley's gum is going to be in 10 39:42 or 15 years p there's not going to be a lot of innovation in in in chewing gum 39:48 uh the and people the internet's not going to cause people to quit chewing gum either i mean at least i mean gates may think so but i don't 39:53 think so but uh it's it's predictability 40:00 regarding the sustainability of a competitive advantage some something special about a product so we look for those kind of products 40:07 and then we look for people that are running the business that are honest and able 40:12 and you know that's it's easier to find people that are honest and able than it is to find 40:19 businesses that are going to stay wonderful for a long period of time they're a lot of business that looked 40:24 like they were going to stay wonderful but really evaporated over time but that's what we're looking for and 40:30 the nice thing about is we don't have to find very many if we find one a year that's terrific 40:35 you know because you don't you don't need a hundred or a thousand great investment ideas to do well 40:41 you need a couple and uh if we the discipline is the most important 40:47 thing we don't need brain power we need discipline that uh you don't need 150 iq to do what i do 40:53 thank god you know you don't need 140 you know 835 you may need 115 or 40:59 something like that and and but you do need discipline you have to wait 41:04 until you see the fat pitch to swing at because investing is a no-call strike game you 41:10 know if i were a baseball player and i only like pitches two inches above my navel 41:15 you know some guy could learn that and he could pitch me you know three or four inches below that i get called out on strikes because i 41:21 never find a pitch i like you can get call out on strikes in baseball you have to you have to swing at pitches 41:27 that you you don't even necessarily like particularly after the count gets to two strikes in business 41:34 you don't have to swing at anything you can sit there and the paper says general motors at 68 or it says general electric 41:39 on 115 or says general dynamics at 63. and if you don't like those prices you 41:44 don't have to swing you can wait there day after day after day after day and there are no called strikes now 41:50 when you swing when you decide to buy something then you know if you swing and miss it's a strike but 41:56 it's a marvelous game to be in because there are no called strikes and you can simply wait for that one time in a month or six 42:04 months or a year or two or three years when you really know what you're doing where you like the price or you like the people running the 42:10 business and then you swing and you only need a few swings in your lifetime so that's the way we try to pick 42:15 businesses we try to stay with things we understand i mean there can be all kinds of 42:20 wonderful investment opportunities out there that i don't understand i don't know what cocoa beans are going to do next 42:26 year you know maybe you know but i don't know i i don't know what i don't know what uh crude oil is going to solve for 42:31 but i don't have to know i just have to know the things i have to know what i know i 42:37 have to know where the limits of my understanding are what i call what my circle of confidence is and if 42:45 i'm only able to evaluate five percent of the businesses in the world no problem i just stay within that five percent and 42:51 try and find something uh and that's most people get in trouble because in investments because they uh well they Discipline 42:59 get itchy you know they can't discipline themselves and they hear about other people making money nothing upsets people so much as 43:04 to hear about their friends making money i mean it's that that's very destructive to discipline because they think 43:09 i'm smarter than that guy next door and he just just bought that new car with the money made trading stocks on the internet so why can't i 43:15 well the answer is you can't over time you will lose money if you trade stocks actively and uh it's it's hard to exercise the 43:23 discipline but anytime you buy something you should be able to take out a 43:28 one-page sheet of paper and say i'm buying general motors it's 65 i'm buying general electric 150 43:35 because and you should write down the reasons if you can't if you can't fill out the sheet 43:41 if it's because somebody told me about it at a cocktail party last night that's not good enough if it's because my broker told me about 43:46 it that's not good enough you know it's uh you've got to have a reason 43:51 for thinking that it makes an intelligent investment you do the same thing if you're buying a farm or an apartment house if you're buying a farm 43:57 you'd say i'm buying this farm with a thousand dollars an acre because i think i can earn sixty dollars an acre on it 44:02 if corn sells it such and such and soybean cells and such and such and yield as such and such and you'd 44:07 figure it out that's the same reason you buy businesses and when you buy stocks you're buying a little piece of a 44:13 business and that's probably the most important thing to remember in in investing is that when you're buying a stock you're buying 44:19 a little piece of the business and if you are buying it at an attractive price for the business for the whole business 44:25 you're gonna make money and if you aren't you know over time you won't make money Moral Standards 44:34 hi my name is cliff mcavoy from elkhorn mount michael um reverend jackson jesse jackson talked to us earlier 44:40 he seemed to believe that the moral standards of today's society will eventually affect us in business 44:45 how do you feel this will affect us as youth growing up in the united states he said the moral standards will affect us how like moral decay 44:53 in society today will affect us in business by how we feel and how we interact with other people 44:58 well i think very difficult to quantify moral standards over time i 45:05 mean that you know you could you could pick out huge weaknesses at any given time in 45:11 terms of how people or the country is behaving and and and huge strengths so i think it's 45:17 enormously difficult to quantify i think by and large we have made progress in 45:23 what i would call institutionalized moral standards in this country i mean the the the uh you know in terms 45:31 of slavery in terms of the uh in terms of i mean the women women couldn't vote you know a century ago 45:38 uh they were half the country were second class citizens in that respect in a barrier 45:43 and they had much lesser rights in terms of inheritance and all kinds of things 45:49 the income tax didn't exist a hundred years ago so the 45:55 idea of taxing people according to to how much that they benefited from 46:00 society and their income uh didn't exist so i think in terms of institutionalized 46:06 moral standards the country has made really quite significant progress uh in 46:13 the in the last hundred years i think you know there's an enormous distance to go i think we're going in the right direction 46:18 maybe by fits and starts but i think we're going in the right direction and i think that uh 46:24 uh you know it will be a it will be a significant plus to 46:29 everybody in this room if they live in a more moral society 40 years from now than a less moral but i think the odds 46:35 are that they will i think the country moves in that direction very difficult to do it all kinds of interests that work against 46:41 it but in the end i think the american people want it and 46:47 you saw it in civil rights i mean it took television to dramatize what was going on and people that weren't near it 46:53 preferred not to think about it but it got through to the conscience of the american people 46:59 and a lot of progress has been made there and there's a lot left to be made but there it's better than it was and the pace may 47:07 seem very slow to those people involved and i can understand that uh the pace you know for 47:13 women's suffrage i mean that went for decades and decades and decades a woman couldn't be on a jury i was 47:19 reading the trial of clarence darrell which took place in california about 19 i don't know 10 or 11 47:26 you know there were no women on the jury the woman wasn't allowed to be on a jury they weren't citizens in that sense so 47:32 it's the moral behavior of the country has in my view 47:38 improved but it uh you know and it'll continue to improve and i hope you all in this room do your part to 47:44 help it improve 47:52 hi i'm nick george from uh central high and uh i was wondering how uh since the stock 47:59 market's so high right now if it'd be smart for us to get to get involved now or to wait till 48:05 until it goes down a little or what yeah i can't tell you whether or not to buy stocks now generally 48:11 i think it's important that you save money you know and whether whether you put in the stock market 48:18 i don't think is terribly important i think if you're interested in stocks you should you should buy it you know 48:24 and you've got a little capital you should buy a few i mean i don't think there's any way of learning about them better than experiencing doing it on 48:30 paper isn't the same i can guarantee you if you lose money on paper or lose real money it's a different experience and uh uh 48:38 and so i i think there i think you'll learn more about yourself uh if you do it that way i bought my 48:45 first stock when i was 11. i was actually i was at rose hill at the time and i bought three shares of city service preferred 48:52 at uh 38 and it went down to 27 which is something i still remember even though i 48:58 was 11 at the time uh and then it went up to 40 and i sold it i made five bucks on my three shares after commissions and 49:04 then it went to 200 and something so uh you know i i probably remember that a little better than if i'd been doing it 49:10 on paper you know and i fooled around doing a lot of things between about age 11 49:16 and 19 in the stock market i did charts i did all kinds of technical analysis i read every book i 49:21 could get on the subject and i didn't do that well i didn't do terrible but but i did i was really just 49:28 floundering around but by that meant by the age of 19 when i read 49:33 ben graham's book i was at the university of nebraska in lincoln i went and bought this book called the intelligent investor just come out 49:39 and it had an enormous impact on me now if i hadn't done in the previous eight years if i hadn't 49:45 been all over the lot i'm not so sure that that book would have had the same impact on me i mean i was by that time i was prepared 49:51 to read ben graham's book which changed my life financially in an incredible way i mean uh 49:59 i wouldn't be up here today if i had read that book but yeah part of life is getting prepared 50:05 so that when something does happen that's significant you can grasp the significance of it and 50:12 know what to do with it and i would say that first eight years of fooling around even though it produced nothing 50:17 financially to speak of uh produced a lot in terms of getting my mind prepared 50:23 for when i really did read something that made sense so i was ready to accept it and i actually went back and went to 50:29 columbia to study under the under graham and because of of reading that book and all 50:36 kinds of things flowed out of it so i would encourage you if you're interested in the field 50:42 uh to to do a few things i still try and make 50:47 it as intelligent as possible i would try to stick with things businesses i thought i understood i'd still get out that sheet of paper 50:54 and i'd write i'm doing this because and just test my reasoning then i go back and read it a year later and 51:00 and see whether what you thought would be true turned out to be true so i would always check myself i believe 51:05 in grading myself on everything you know doctors have post mortems and they they do it because they learn 51:11 from postmortems and business people don't like to do postmortems when i'm i'm i can be on the board of a company 51:17 and they get about owners building plants or buying companies and they never wanted two years later to 51:23 run a check on how that decision turned out because it it can be unpleasant uh but you learn 51:29 from postmortems and you don't want to learn it's way better learn from other people's mistakes than your own but you got to 51:35 learn from a few of your own too and the time to do it is when you're young 51:41 we can do maybe one more and then we wrap this up at one dewey or maybe maybe two more 51:48 my name is pete walsh i'm from creighton prep and my question is to what extent do you 51:54 feel that the government with the the current policies of welfare and social security 51:59 is it financially competent and fiscally prepared for the future well 52:06 i i think that the country as a whole is quite quite well prepared for the 52:12 future that doesn't mean that adopt would adopt every policy they have but but 52:18 uh i think a we have an enormously rich society enormously rich society and it'll get 52:24 richer everyone isn't going to participate in that some will won't participate because 52:29 of physical disabilities others because of mental disabilities other because of shortcomings in the education they 52:35 received when they were growing up all kinds of reasons we have a prosperous enough society to 52:41 be able to take care of of those people and we should take care of them and how we do it 52:46 so that they feel most useful in life and how we do it so that we continue to encourage people to be more productive themselves and all that 52:52 i mean those are not easy questions but but that shouldn't take our eye off the ball of 52:58 feeling we should do something about it that um i often i i pose this problem 53:03 sometimes to people i say let's assume that it's 24 hours before you're born and all of you can take this test 24 53:09 hours before you're born and a genie comes to you and the genie 53:15 says what was your name again out there whatever 53:20 we'll call you joe and the genie says joe says you look pretty promising to me i 53:26 think you've got kind of a sense of fair play and and a good mind and so i'm going to let you have an 53:32 extraordinary opportunity i'm going to let you design the world 53:37 into which you're going to be born in 24 hours it's yours you pick out the political 53:43 rules you pick out the economic rules you pick out the social rules you design the world and when you're 53:50 born in 24 hours you're going to be born into that world and that's the world that's going to 53:55 exist for your lifetime for your children's lifetime for your grandchildren's lifetime 54:01 and you having heard of some of these genie jokes in the past would say what's the catch the genie says well 54:07 it's a very slight catch i said when when you're born in 24 hours 54:12 you're going to emerge in this world you designed but what you don't know is whether 54:18 you're going to be born black or white male or female 54:23 rich or poor brighter able-bodied or infirm in the united 54:29 states or afghanistan all you know is that you're going to reach into this 54:36 barrel which now has six billion balls as we know representing one person every person in the world and you're 54:42 going to participate in what i call the ovarian lottery you're going to take one ball out of that barrel and you're never going to 54:47 get another ball that's you you're going to get one ball and now you're going to emerge now what kind of 54:52 rules do you want to have for that society not knowing which ball you're going to get 54:59 now that i put to you is the way i think people should think about social policy and if you're born if 55:05 you're lucky enough to be born in this country you've won the lottery already but we should have a system in my view 55:12 that encourages the jack welch's and the bill gates and all of that to work far beyond the time when it has any 55:18 economic significance to them we want people commanding those resources who are extremely able to command them that's 55:24 how that's how the standard of living moves forward so we should want you know we should want tom osborne 55:30 coaching in nebraska we should want we should want bill gates designing software and we don't want to mix up those two 55:36 we don't want to we don't we don't want to get bill coaching in nebraska uh so you want you want people you want 55:42 a system that directs gets people to their potential and and puts them 55:47 in the position where they can do the most good for society but you also want a system for the people get the wrong ball i mean 55:53 somebody's going to get the ball you know that says 80 iq somebody's going to get the ball 55:58 that says this disease or that disease early in life that cripples them and we've got a rich enough society 56:05 that we can we can take care of those people and i think that to get back to your question i think 56:10 that this society will move more and more in that direction it has the capability of moving more and more in 56:15 that direction as our resources and our output increases and i think that 56:21 it has the will to do that in a general way although like i say there have always been lots of hits and starts so there is no shortage in the united 56:29 states of resources there's no shortage of output you have to have a system that 56:35 encourages people to behave to the limit of their abilities and puts them in the right 56:41 place but then you have to make sure that everybody gets taken care of too now we can do one more and then we will 56:47 break thing i'll let the fellow with the microphone and woman here make the decision 56:56 hi my name is ben gold i go to bruno talbot and i wanted to know how do you think the media affects the world economically today 57:04 well it's a small question [Music] well what it obviously does simply 57:10 because it's it's moved so far technologically as it's brought it together in a big way i 57:16 mean i was over in china a few years ago and i was right after the time of the women's conference in in in beijing and i was reading 57:24 the chinese coverage uh of that conference and of course it it 57:30 had nothing to do with what was taking place but the internet was coming in and and you know you can you can access 57:38 the washington post or the new york times or i get the washington post at 9 30 here at night 57:43 in effect i never could get it the next day on on through through uh physical delivery 57:48 but i buy electronic delivery i can read it uh you know probably earlier than most of people in washington are reading it 57:54 so the ability to communicate and the degree to which the world can 58:00 have awareness of what's going on every place in the world it's just you know it's been a quantum leap 58:07 you know that will have there are a lot of things that come out of that and uh net they're a plus over time but 58:14 the they i mean they the the ability of information to be available to everyone worldwide almost 58:21 instant instantaneously it's it's it's a can be huge advances in things like medicine 58:26 for example just to pick one uh so it it's a net plus it has a it has a big 58:34 effect and the definition of media has now been expanded 58:40 enormously i mean there were three television networks in in the 19 and you know in the early 58:45 1960s and that was it there were three highways information traveled electronically and if the three pieces 58:52 of information where i love lucy you know something else and something else those were the three choices of information or 58:57 entertainment that you had for tens and tens of millions of people sitting there looking at a tube 59:02 now it's unlimited and that's only what three or so decades so it's just exploded and it'll continue to 59:08 explode and net i think it's a plus and i think it's one o'clock i want to thank you all i i wish you 59:14 well you're gonna do terrific thanks [Applause] 59:29 thank you POST URL https://aalbc.com/tc/topic/12375-do-you-think-black-parents-black-one-percent-need-to-invest-in-schrumpts/ PRIOR EDITION https://aalbc.com/tc/events/event/632-economic-corner-31-01222026/ NEXT EDITION https://aalbc.com/tc/events/event/637-economic-corner-33-01292026/

VIDEO REFERRAL https://aalbc.com/tc/events/event/356-mlk-jr-day-good-news-calendar/ COMMENTARY @Onderonable 2 days ago The strangest thing I learned growing up was that blacks do not respect Martin Luther King Jr. or his message of non-violence. He is not held up as a hero by them. 1 Reply @richardmurrayaalbcassist7279 0 seconds ago well in my experience most blacks, and all the black people I know of in my life including myself, respect Martin Luther King junior, the issue is, they don't concur that the strategy of nonviolence he lived by was best for black people to grow positively in the usa , or elsewhere. He is held up as a hero by most black people in the usa, but he isn't always deemed correct by most black people in the usa Reply ONLINE REACTION TO MLK JR DAY 2026 thank you @Troy CONTENT I'm revisiting the 7+ year old post because it is ranking high in search the past couple of weeks (at least) and has attracted more than 31K visitors (@richardmurray this would be mostly real people, not bots). If folks with influence in the media cared about sites like AALBC viral posts, of which we have many, this would be newsworthy. It seems MLK's sexual predilections are of interest to a lot of people. I guess because of his recent birthday. I just ran a search on the phrase was MLK gay and this post came up #6. Reading some of the earlier posts on the conversation, I must have been in a mood (sorry @Delano I was bit critical over you use of the word illegitimate when referencing children. I still don't like the word used in that context, but thanks fore starting this conversation 🙂 Maybe I should return Google ads to the site. I the crappy Ads Google likes to server here, but AI told me how to step up the quality... we will see. The site as a whole URL REFERRAL https://aalbc.com/tc/topic/5546-martin-luther-kings-sex-life-and-his-legacy/page/2/#comment-79758 MY COMMENT citation https://aalbc.com/tc/topic/5546-martin-luther-kings-sex-life-and-his-legacy/page/2/#findComment-79773 ted just now thank you @Troy this is very interesting to me. I used the link and yes, it did come up sixth. I have never once searched such a thing. hmm, very informative to the human condition online. I wish you could access demographic information on who is searching. So many today, search for complaint, search for negativity.. hmm , thank you for addressing me in your comment.

AI Palooza Webinar (NABJ) National Association of Black Journalists video 01/28/2026 with Benét Wilson Something to learn Associated Press has been using AI for ten years LINK https://www.facebook.com/share/v/1JUMBFoZ5f/ EMBEDED VIDEO